How We Love

"They do not love that do not show their love."
-- William Shakespeare

Meditation: a poem by Joyce Sutphen entitled “What the Heart Cannot Forget” 

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,

cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub

of watery fingers along its edge.

The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,

remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,

gathering itself together for the fall.

The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under

its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down

the sand under the beaks of savage birds.

The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years

of drought, the floods, the way things came

walking slowly towards it long ago.

And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches

where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,

and the arms remember lifting up the child.

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,

everything it lost and found again, and everyone

it loved, the heart cannot forget.

Reading: by Ed Bacon from Eight Habits of Love. The first chapter of the book is entitled “The Habit of Generosity.” (p. 1)

The mighty Jordan River meanders along the eastern border of Israel/Palestine, giving life to two bodies of water, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee teems with this life. Everywhere you look there is vitality. On the water, people are fishing, boating, and waterskiing; on the banks, people are relaxing, eating, and drinking. Everyone is enjoying themselves. Sixty-five miles to the south lies the Dead Sea. It is just that, dead. The reason for this stark contrast is simple: the Jordan River flows into and out of the beautiful and vibrant Sea of Galilee. Inflow and outflow. Inhale and exhale. Receiving and giving… From the southern banks of the Sea of Galilee the river makes its way into the Dead Sea, but there the river stops. There is no outflow from the Dead Sea. 

The human spirit, just like the seas, needs both inflow and outflow in order to foster life and create energy. When love flows out from within us, more flows in. When we open our hearts to love, we not only spread that love to others but also open ourselves to receiving love from others. Our outflow determines our inflow. The more we give, the more vital our lives, the bigger our spirits, and the deeper our giving.

Reading: by Harold Kushner from a Handbook for the Heart (edited by Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield, p. 39) 

I recognize that I need love in the same way that I need food and sleep and exercise. I understand that my soul would shrivel up from malnutrition if I didn’t love, didn’t give love and receive love. One of the things that works for me, helps me fill my heart with love, is the series of Jewish prayers that focus on being grateful for all the things around us that we might otherwise take for granted. The first words of prayer when Jews wake up in the morning are to thank God that they’re still alive and awake, that their bodies work, their arms, legs, their eyes, their minds work, that they have clothes to wear and food to eat and things to look forward to. When your heart is filled with gratitude, when you can just go out and feel how lucky you are that the world is there for you, and how lucky you are that there are people out there trying to enrich your world, it’s a lot easier to be loving – to yourself and to others.

Reading:  from the Gospel of John, Paul, George and Ringo. These words are attributed to Paul. (“Can’t Buy Me Love” by Paul McCartney, first recorded in January 1964)

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright

I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright

Cos I don't care too much for money, and money can't buy me love

I'll give you all I got to give if you say you'll love me too

I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you

I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so

Can't buy me love, no no no, no

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied

Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy

I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

How We Love

A Sermon Delivered on February 16, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Fifty years ago last week, the Beatles’ arrival in North America was marked by their live appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9th, 1964. Seventy-three million Americans watched the show – that’s over one-third of the US population at the time. According to the Nielsen rating service, this was “the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program.” 

When I was a kid, Beatles songs were in the air. By the time I was a teenager, and a Beatles fan, the group had already broken up.  The Fabulous Four were together only eight years. But in those years, they grew to become the biggest and best-selling band in music history.

The vast majority of their songs, early on, were about love. “She Loves You,” “All My Loving,” “Love Me Do,” and – of course – “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which according to the Washington Post, was their fourth most popular number one hit. 

They were in their teens and early twenties, when they wrote these songs. And so perhaps not surprisingly, the love they were talking about reflected teen romance. That’s one kind of love: intense, passionate, overwhelming. It’s the love of heart-throbs, heart-aches, and heart-breaks.

But as the Beatles grew older, and perhaps a bit wiser, their love songs changed. The youth culture of the sixties was transformed by the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. The Beatles’ songs reflected these transformations.

 “All You Need Is Love” (the anthem our choir sang this morning) was performed live by the Beatles in the summer of 1967, on the first ever live global television link, broadcast via satellite, and watched by over 150 million people in 26 countries. As one music critic puts it – the song is an anthem for the Summer of Love. It is “a plea for love and peace around the world,” and conveys a “zen-like wisdom, reinforcing the limitless power of love.”  (www.ultimateclassicrock.com) 

John Lennon, who was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and who wrote the song, thought of it as a kind of “propaganda song.” He saw himself as a revolutionary artist, dedicated to social change. The songs he wrote increasingly imagined a revolutionary love. 

* * *

Last week, Pamela Van Wyk, and my wife, Elaine, joined 1,500 other Unitarian Universalists, and about 100,000 demonstrators altogether in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Mass Moral March. The protestors were marching for voting rights, civil rights,  women’s rights, and labor rights. They were marching in support of public education, and health care for all, and the alleviation of poverty. The NAACP played a key role in organizing the march, which included a wide array of grassroots organizations. 

Our Unitarian Universalist involvement was part of our “Standing on the Side of Love” initiative, that is perpetually trying to rally our support for important social causes. The spirit of this movement is conveyed in our first hymn this morning: “We are standing on the side of love, hands joined together as hearts beat as one. Emboldened by faith we dare to proclaim we are standing on the side of love.”

This is yet another way to imagine love.

* * *

What is it we mean when we talk of “love”?

According to the psychologist Alison Gopnik, on the most basic level, love is “attachment.” When psychologists speak of “attachment” in early childhood development, they mean what the rest of us call love. “All children want and need love. The craving for protection and nurturance is innate and universal – it’s a necessary part of the evolutionary scheme,” she says. It develops in the context of the give and take, the back and forth, in the relationship between infant and caregiver. (The Philosophical Baby, p. 180)

Our universal human need for love is most apparent when we are very young. As we grow older and more self-sufficient, independent, and autonomous, we may imagine ourselves less dependent on love to survive and to thrive. But this is really a mistake. 

Harold Kushner is right. Even as adults, we need love in the same way we need food and sleep and exercise. Our soul would shrivel up, if we didn’t love – if we didn’t give and receive love.

Love is equally important, regardless whether we are young or old, whether we are parent or child. It is a rooted both in our deepest biological and evolutionary nature, as well as expressed in our highest spiritual sensibilities and aspirations.

As Thomas Merton puts it, 

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found… We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love – either with another human person or with God.” (from Love and Living)

* * *

Love can be understood and experienced in many different ways. It can be imagined as something you fall into. Love takes hold of you, it’s out of your control, as you fall in love with another person, fall in love with God, or fall in love with life itself. 

But love can also be understood as an attitude you consciously cultivate, an ability you try to acquire, a habit you intentionally practice. This is the kind of love Ed Bacon explores.

He says, we can learn to love by cultivating eight specific habits – call them paths to personal growth, or spiritual disciplines. We can deepen our experience of love when we foster our sense of compassion and community, candor and forgiveness, truthfulness, stillness, playfulness, and generosity. 

As Ed Bacon sees it, generosity is the first, and perhaps most basic dimension of love. It reflects an essential dynamic of the human spirit. The human spirit moves and flows, just like the Sea of Galilee. It needs inflow and outflow in order to foster life and creativity. The notion of “flow” is at the root of the word “affluent.” Affluence is not the accumulation of wealth. It is the give and take, the sharing of wealth. This is true in both spiritual and financial terms. As someone put it at a meeting here a few weeks ago: “Money is like love, because we have to give it away to get the most out of it.” A spirit of generosity helps us do just that. 

If you stop and think about it, this makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, it can sometimes be a challenge to put a spirit of generosity into action, because we are afraid. We are afraid that if we give things away we will be left empty-handed.

As Ed Bacon writes, 

“We often worry about not having enough, financially or emotionally. This feeling flows directly from the force field of fear. I must hoard. I must grasp. I simply do not have enough to give even a little bit away: not enough money, energy, or forgiveness. I am depleted. This notion is especially prevalent in our culture today, given the fragile state of the world economy and of our precious Earth.” (p. 14)

But this sense of scarcity is not a reflection of the world as it is, it is a reflection of our fears. Real life, and real love, exists in abundance. It flourishes to the degree that we share it and share in it. A spirit of generosity can help us overcome our fears.

Ed Bacon writes,

“Generosity comes from knowing that love is not a zero-sum game. The energy of love, of approaching life from your loving self, knows no limits. Whenever someone loves, more love is generated. Life flows. Imaginative ideas multiply. Cooperation and goodwill spread. Creativity-limiting fear diminishes. When people act from their fearful selves, not trusting that there is enough love and goodwill to go around, they not only hurt those in need but they hurt themselves too. They become like the Dead Sea, stagnant.” (p. 5)

Bacon tells the story of a friend of his who practices generosity simply by making a point of complimenting one person every day, whether it is a stranger in the street or a friend at the office. She will tell a woman in the corner store that her shoes are wonderful or comment favorably to a man on the train about the book he is reading. 

Seeing the surprise on their faces, watching the transformation as the recipient acknowledges and absorbs the blessing, is infinitely rewarding. Her kindness does not get used up. It begets more kindness.

The habit of generosity can teach us to be more loving. It can make us happier people. It can inspire us to open our hearts to others, and the whole world around us, and help us play a greater part in changing the world for the better. 

And the best thing about generosity is that it is both a spirit and a skill we can choose to consciously cultivate. Ed Bacon offers a list of several possible practices. Let me share three of them with you:

First - Consider sharing the gift of a smile. Small kindnesses can have an enormous impact. You may be amazed how your day can change when you smile and speak to strangers. Almost always they will respond by mirroring your smile. This simple act not only helps us open our hearts, it also reduces the overall amount of stress in the world.

Second - Consider making a list of five things you are grateful for today. Think of five things….  And as you do so notice the subtle change in yourself as you write. See if you can feel your fearful self actually shifting to your loving self. Notice that all of those items on your list were gifts to you from some other hand from someone or some source beyond yourself. 

The third and final practice I want to share with you has to do with money. This weekend marks the Kick Off of our annual stewardship fundraising effort, after all. This is what Ed Bacon suggests, he writes:

“Consider how much money you currently give away every year. Compare it proportionally to your household income. Stretch yourself to give away a larger percentage; you could start with 10 percent of your spending money. Be aware of the effect that this giving has on your fear quotient. My experience is that with every percentage point I give approaching 10 percent of my total income and then beyond, the less clenched and fearful I am about money, and the more [mindful] I am in budgeting the rest. Those of us throughout the world who give 10 percent or more know that the remaining 90 percent goes much farther as a result of having given the 10 percent away.  Perhaps you are deeply in debt or your budget just barely meets you needs, and you find giving away money causes too much anxiety for you to do so with equanimity. But we do all have the capacity to give, even if it is only a little. Each small effort at financial Generosity brings you closer to leaving behind your fear of scarcity.” (p. 26)

* * *

I don’t know how well the truths and teachings contained in the Gospels of John, Paul, George, and Ringo will withstand the test of time. But I do think they got one thing right: we can’t buy love. We can’t gain love by chasing it. We can’t accumulate love by hoarding it. We can’t hold on to love by locking it up inside our hearts.

We will gain love the more generously we give it away. We will find love the more we open our hearts, the more we allow love to flow into us and out of us. Our love will never run out, as long as we are willing give and receive. The more we give, the more vital our lives, and the bigger our spirits.

May we have the courage to face down our fears,

And find it in our hearts to practice the habit of love.

Guided by love, may we discover the deep joy of generosity. 

May the spirit of generosity transform our lives, and change the world.

Amen.

The Religious Impulse

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion."
-- Albert Einstein

Meditation: by Ralph Helverson “Impassioned Clay” (SLT #654)

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.

Out of the passions of our clay it rises.

We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self-respect beyond our failures.

We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty, when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart.

We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all that we have received.

We have religion when we look upon people with all their failings and still find in them good; when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart.

We have religion when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.

Reading: by the Swiss-born philosopher Alain de Botton from Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (p. 11, 13)

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true – in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets…

To save time, and at the risk of losing readers [or listeners] painfully early on in this project, let us bluntly state that of course no religions are true in any God-given sense…

I was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, as the son of two secular Jews who placed religious belief somewhere on a par with an attachment to Santa Claus. I recall my father reducing my sister to tears in an attempt to dislodge her modestly held notion that a reclusive god might dwell somewhere in the universe. She was eight years old at the time. If any members of their social circle were discovered to harbor clandestine religious sentiments, my parents would start to regard them with a sort of pity more commonly reserved for those diagnosed with degenerative disease and could from then on never be persuaded to take them seriously again.

Reading: by the American author, and devout Catholic, Flannery O’Connor, from a journal she kept in her early twenties. This is from one of many entries she addresses to God. (The New Yorker, Sep. 16, 2013)

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me push myself aside.

I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do. I have prayed to You about this with my mind and my nerves on it and strung my nerves into a tension over it and said,”oh God, please,” and “I must,” and “please, please.” I have not asked You, I feel, in the right way… I do not want to presume. I want to love.

Oh God please make my mind clear.

Reading: by the Indian-born priest and psychotherapist Anthony De Mello, a short anecdote entitled “Clarity” (from One Minute Wisdom, p. 8) 

“Don’t look for God,” the Master said. “Just look – and all will be revealed.”

“But how is one to look?”

“Each time you look at anything, see only what is there and nothing else.”

The disciples were bewildered, so the Master made it simpler: “For instance: When you look at the moon, see the moon and nothing else.”

“What else could one see except the moon when one looks at the moon?”

“A hungry person could see a ball of cheese. A lover, the face of his beloved.”

The Religious Impulse

A Sermon Delivered on February 9, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

So tell me. Why do you come to church? Why are you here this morning – when you could be sleeping in? Why did you brave the icy cold, when you could have stayed home, settled on a comfortable couch perusing the Sunday paper, or watching cartoons with your kids? 

Did you come here because you are looking for God this morning? Are you here because you hope to catch a glimpse of God? This is a church, after all, a house of God. Or are you here to say a prayer, in hopes that God will hear you?

Any of these are fine reasons to come to church. But, in my experience, these aren’t the reasons most of us offer, when asked why we are here. When the question has come up in conversation over the years, I don’t recall a single instance when the answer included any mention of “God.”

Instead, most of us say we come for some time of reflection after a busy week, to find food for thought, and possibly even inspiration. We come to listen to fine music, and sing together. We come to provide some religious education for our children. We come here to see old friends, or make new friends, and feel a comforting sense of community among folks who grapple with the realities of life and death, hope and despair, and with questions of right and wrong – very much like we do. We come here to join together in a common “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” – that’s the way we put it in the fourth of our seven UU principles. 

But searching for religious truth is not as simple as it sounds. The most boring question we can ask of any religion is whether it is true, says Alain de Botton, at least if we mean truth in any “God-given sense.”  

Coming from a family of adamant atheists, he approaches religion with a healthy dose of skepticism. His parents taught him to always keep a cool, critical eye on the line dividing fact and fantasy. They taught him to be wary of religious beliefs that seem narrow-minded, dogmatic, and literalistic. Those expressions of religion that divide people into opposing adversarial camps of true believers versus non-believers. Religion can be divisive and dangerous. And this is the kind of religion his parents rejected.

But, at this stage of his life, he has come to see that religion is not always necessarily nonsensical. His brand of atheism is opposed only to those who believe their truths have been handed down from high heaven. A more earthly and human religion is not only more plausible, but actually very useful in this day and age.

Things become more interesting, he says, once we recognize that religion was invented to serve two central needs, which continue to this day: 

“First, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise. God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions...” (p. 12)

* * *

In Flannery O’Connor’s mind, God is not dead, but very much alive. Unlike Alain de Botton, she was raised in a very religious home, in Savannah, Georgia. Her parents were devout Catholics - a religious minority in the predominantly Protestant “Bible Belt.” 

In her journal, Flannery O’Connor addresses God with a youthful sincerity and an unmistakable sense longing. She is only twenty years old, but has already been confronted with some hard realities of life and death. When she was 12, her father was diagnosed with lupus. The disease aggressively attacked his immune system. Flannery was devastated when he died just three years later. She was fifteen. And she herself was diagnosed with the same disease when she was twenty-five. 

Flannery O’Connor was a great author, with a very distinct perspective and literary voice, that conveyed a deep and nuanced understanding of human frailty and longing, with a healthy dose of irony, and dark humor.

Reading her journal, I don’t sense a spirituality of divisiveness or dogmatism. Instead, I detect the sensibility of a poet. Someone who is skilled at using her lively imagination to paint pictures of the mind, and tell stories of the heart. 

* * *

Do you or don’t you believe in God? That question does seem to be a favorite litmus test when it comes to religion. It’s a shame that the issue is so often framed in terms of an either/or. It reduces many a conversation about religion into an all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave, right-or-wrong kind of debate. I have always found it much more interesting to ask: What do you mean when you say “God”?

I confess, I have never gotten into the habit of addressing God as a person. For me, God, the idea of God, is much too multi-layered and multi-faceted, to be squeezed into someone I feel comfortable addressing as “thee.” For me, God is, above all, mysterious. I know humans have imagined God in countless fascinating, imaginative, evocative, inspiring, and very different ways through the course of history. I can’t bring myself to grasp onto one particular understanding of God, and declare it to be true. Rather, I am moved by the multitude of gods imagined by humankind over time – a colorful parade of divinity, a sacred spectacle - each aspect of which touches me differently, each of which unlocks different doorways of my psyche, each of which shines a light into a different dark corner of my soul.

* * *

Flannery O’Connor imagines that religious practice is an effort to see God, a heavenly being, whose presence is obscured by our own shadow, our own agendas, preconceptions, our own fears and desires. 

Anthony De Mello imagines that our efforts to see God are themselves a big part of the problem. Rather than looking for a particular something called “God,” we should simply look at anything and everything. We should open our eyes to what is right in front of us. “See only what is there and nothing else.”

Anthony De Mello was a Jesuit priest. But his advice to the students seeking God, his explanation of revelation, has distinctly Buddhist connotations. It was the Buddha who envisioned salvation as an awakening. He compared our everyday attitudes and perceptions to those of someone dozing half asleep. There is no God in heaven above. There is no otherworldly paradise. Enlightenment means opening our eyes to the world right here, right now. 

Real religion, from the Buddhist perspective, requires no supernatural miracles. The world all around is itself a miracle. And we are a part of that miracle. Religious awareness comes when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived.

The Buddhist teacher Joko Beck puts it this way, she says, “Any true religious practice is to see once again that which is already so: to see the fundamental unity of all things.” She writes: 

“People often ask me, if this fundamental unity is the true state of affairs, why is it almost never seen? It’s not because of a lack of the right scientific information; I’ve known a lot of physicists who had the intellectual knowledge, yet their dealings with life did not reflect this awareness.

…The main reason we fail to see that which is already so, is our fear of being hurt by that which seems separate from us. Needless to say, our physical being does need to be protected or it can’t function. For instance, if we’re having a picnic on a train track and a train’s coming, it’s quite a good idea to move. It’s necessary to avoid and to repair physical damage. But there’s immense confusion between that kind of hurt, and other less tangible [hurts]. “My lover left me, it hurts to be alone.” “I’ll never get a job.” “Other people are so mean.” We view all these as sources of hurt. We often feel we have been hurt by other people. 

If we look back on our lives we can make a list of people or events who have hurt us. We all have our list. Out of that long list of hurts we develop a conditioned way of looking at life: we learn patterns of avoidance; we have judgments and opinions about anything and anyone that we fear might hurt us.

…And the true life, the fundamental unity, escapes us. Sadly enough, some of us die without ever having lived, because we’re so obsessed with trying to avoid being hurt.” (Everyday Zen: Love & Work p. 169)

The religious impulse is the desire to overcome our avoidance. It is the impulse toward life.

* * *

Religious inspiration can be found looking anywhere. “Just to be is a blessing,” Abraham Heschel said, “just to live is holy.” In some ways religious truths are simple and self-evident. And yet they are also strangely elusive. Religious practice is a matter of finding ways to remind ourselves, again and again, of things we know to be true. Not true, in the sense of being handed down to us from heaven, but true in the sense of an experience that touches our innermost being. True in the sense that it somehow corresponds with our own deepest knowing. 

Religious truth can be found in something as simple as the sight of the moon. When we look at the moon, what do we see? Do we see a sliver of God, obscured by our own shadow. Or do we see a ball of cheese, because we are hungry? Or do we see the face of our beloved, a reflection of our own love? Or, when we look at the moon, do we see the moon and nothing else?

In the Zen Buddhist tradition looking at the moon is the focus of autumn ritual called tsukimi. Alain de Botton describes it like this: 

“Every year, on the fifteenth day of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, followers gather at nightfall around specially constructed cone-shaped viewing platforms, where for several hours prayers are read aloud which use the moon as a springboard for reflections on Zen ideas of impermanence. Candles are lit and white rice dumplings are prepared and shared among strangers in an atmosphere at once companionable and serene.” (p. 294)

For Alain de Botton, tsukimi is a perfect example of what religion at its best should be. Religion should help us set aside a time and place, where we can gather together, and join in simple rituals that serve to deepen their sense of community. Lighting candles, sharing a meal, pondering the words of wise women and men. 

We need this kind of religion. We need a place, where we can create a supportive community, that will be there for us in times of trouble, that will help us find hope, when our mind is clouded by doubt and despair. 

We were each raised in a particular kind of religious family. We each have been taught lessons of right and wrong, of where to find truth and what it means to live well. We come here to be a part of new and larger religious family. We come here to imagine a community of harmony, of love and justice, it is our task to create, and to envision a family of humanity, in which all our divisions are overcome. A family that is founded on the fundamental unity of all things. 

At least that’s what I think.

What about you? Why do you come to church? What do you hope to find here? What do you long to do here?

May our answers to these questions be expressed in our every word and deed,

And be abundantly apparent, in this religious home, we call our own.

Amen.

Getting It Right

"The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own."
-- Charles Caleb Colton

Reading: from the Groundhog Day FAQ on the website of  “The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club”

1. Yes, Punxsutawney Phil is the only true weather forecasting groundhog. The others are just imposters.

2. There has been only one Punxsutawney Phil. Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking "groundhog punch" (a secret recipe). One sip, which is administered every summer at the Groundhog Picnic, gives him seven more years of life.

3. On February 2nd, Phil comes out of his burrow on Gobbler's Knob, in front of thousands of faithful followers from all over the world, to predict the weather for the rest of the winter.

4. According to legend, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring.

Reading: by Mary Oliver from a poem entitled “Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond”

As for life,

I’m humbled,

I’m without words 

sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,

and soft as a spring pond,

both of these

and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,

and so many mysteries

beautiful as eggs in a nest,

still unhatched

though warm and watched over

by something I’ve never seen – 

a tree angel, perhaps,

or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world

To be dazzled, then to be reflective…

Reading: by Pete Seeger, from a story he tells as part of the song “Seek and You Shall Find” (which appeared on the album, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs, released in 1967) 

There was once a king in the olden days. He had three sons and he wanted to give them a good education. He called in his wise men. He said, "I wish you'd boil down all the world's wisdom into one book, and I'm going to give it to my sons and have them learn it."

So the wise men went away. Took them a whole year, and they came back with a beautiful leather-bound volume, trimmed in gold. The king leafed through it, "Hmm... Very good. Hmm... Yes! This is it!" And he gives it to his sons and he says, "OK, learn it!"

Then he turned to the wise men and he said, "You know, you did such a good job with that, I wonder if you couldn't boil down all the world's wisdom into one sentence."

Well, the wise men went away. It took them five years. When they came back their beards must've been dragging on the ground. They said, "Your Majesty, we have decided upon the sentence."

"What is it?" says the king.

"This too shall pass."

I guess the king didn't have anything better to do with his wise men. He said, "I wonder if you couldn't boil down all the world's wisdom into one word?"

The poor men must've groaned. They went away. It took them ten years. When they came back they were all bent over. The king said, "Oh yes, what was that word?" He'd forgotten all about his little whim.

They said, "Your Majesty, the one word is: Maybe."

Getting It Right

A Sermon Delivered on February 2, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Today is Groundhog Day. And at 7:25 this morning, Eastern Time, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and – I am sorry say – saw his shadow. That means six more weeks of winter for us. On the positive side though, I can tell you, the National Climatic Data Center has been tracking Phil’s predictions for several years now, and has determined that his forecasts are “on average, inaccurate.” Scientists say, “The groundhog has shown no talent for predicting the arrival of spring, especially in recent years.”

I think it is safe to say that today’s Groundhog Day observances in Punxsutawney, PA, are conducted tongue-in-cheek. I doubt there are many who seriously consider the designated groundhog a real weather prophet or prognosticator. It is a celebration supported by the tourist trade and the village chamber of commerce. 

As historians tell us, “The trail of groundhog history actually leads back to Clymer H. Freas, city editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper. In 1887, he was inspired by a group of local hunters and gourmets who held a groundhog hunt followed by a picnic barbecue of, well, you know. Anyway, Freas thought it so much fun that he wrote up the group as the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club and went on to promote the Punxsutawney Groundhog as the official weather forecaster. As he embellished the story year after year, other newspapers picked it up and soon everyone looked to Punxsutawney Phil for the critical prediction of when spring would return to the nation.” (National Climatic Data Center website on Groundhog Day)

But the roots of Groundhog Day go deeper. They can be traced to the Gaelic spring festival Imbolc, a pagan celebration which is still observed in Ireland and Scotland today. Traditionally Imbolc included “weather divination.” On this day, people would watch to see whether serpents or badgers emerged from the winter dens – and this, they believed, would tell them something about the weeks of winter remaining.  

I can certainly relate to the desire to know what the future holds. Especially this year, with its unusual arctic temperatures and the recurring “polar vortex,” I find myself checking the weather forecasts more and more frequently, longing for the day when winter loosens its icy grip on us.

* * *

“Groundhog Day” is also the title of a movie from 1993, a romantic comedy with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. The movie is set in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. It’s the story of a TV weatherman, named Phil, who is sent to Punxsutawney with a small film crew, to offer live coverage of the annual groundhog weather prophesy. After the groundhog observances, a freak blizzard descends on the area, and Phil and his co-workers find themselves stranded in town for the day. The next morning, for reasons that aren’t explained, Phil finds himself waking up in the same Bed & Breakfast, at exactly the same time as the day before. In fact, it is February 2^nd all over again. Everyone is acting just as they did the day before, only for Phil it is a strange and puzzling do-over. The day ends with same blizzard, which keeps him stuck in town. And the next morning, for Phil, it is February 2^nd, Groundhog Day, again, and again, and again.

The movie tells the story of Phil’s strange predicament. At the outset, he is portrayed as self-centered and vain. He is bored with his job, and considers the coverage of Groundhog Day to be beneath him, a waste of his precious time and talent. He sees himself as destined for a more lucrative network news position, for fame and fortune. And he uses every opportunity to remind his co-workers that he is superior to them. 

Being mysteriously stuck in a small town he despises evokes a range of responses as the day is repeated, again and again. First he is simply puzzled. Then he is elated, realizing that he has a real advantage over others, knowing how their day will unfold before they do. He indulges in every imaginable pleasure, without concern for the consequences. His hedonism and egotism reach new heights. But over time he realizes that these pleasures are superficial and ultimately not satisfying. He tries to foster a more meaningful relationship with an attractive co-worker, and fails miserably. He grows horribly depressed. And what seemed like an eternally recurring day of happiness and indulgence, becomes an inescapable experience of despair. He commits suicide. Again and again. But invariably wakes up every morning to the very same day. 

Finally he realizes that in order to find true happiness, he needs to fill his days with acts of kindness and creativity. Because he has relived the same day countless times, he discovers dozens of opportunities to help people: the old ladies whose car got a flat tire – he promptly changes it for them; the boy who falls from a tree – he catches him in the nick of time; and the man who chokes on a piece of steak at dinner is saved by Phil’s surprisingly skilled Heimlich maneuver. He learns to play the piano, reads literature, and becomes a master ice-sculptor. Having become a different person in the process, Phil is finally able to connect meaningfully with the co-worker he has come to love. In the end he is able to make the very most of this one single day, with no expectation of reward, no hopes for salvation or escape, perfectly at peace with himself and the world. The next morning, the spell is broken. It is February 3rd. And Phil is free to continue his life – a very different life than the one he knew when the story began.

* * *

It’s a good movie. Silly, but also thought-provoking. (If you’ve never seen, or if you’d like to see it again – it’s showing this evening at 7:30 at the Art Theater.) It wasn’t a big box-office hit when it was first released, but over the years has become a cult classic. A few years ago the U.S. National Film Registry added it to a list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” movies.

And, thanks to the movie, the term “Groundhog Day” has entered common use to convey the sense of an unpleasant experience that is repeated again and again. So, for instance, during the Iraq war military personnel used the term “Groundhog Day” to mean: Every day of your tour in Iraq – the days never change – always long and hot, and the same events keep recurring. (“‘Embrace the Suck’ and More Military Speak,” NPR, Mar. 8, 2007)

Interestingly, the movie also struck a chord for a lot of religious people. After the movie was released, its director Harold Ramis heard from Jesuit priests, rabbis and Buddhists, all of whom sent letters saying, “Oh, you must be a Christian, because your movie beautifully expresses Christian belief,” or Jewish belief, or Buddhist belief.

Some say the movie perfectly illustrates the Buddhist idea of “samsara,” the continuing cycle of rebirth that Buddhists associate with human suffering, and which we can escape through diligent religious practice, hard work, and good deeds, until we achieve nirvana. 

Others says the movie resonates with Jewish viewers, because the main character is rewarded by being returned to earth again and again to perform more mitzvahs, or good deeds, rather than reaching nirvana, or being granted the heavenly reward imagined by Christians. Rabbi Niles Goldstein says, “The movie tells us, as Judaism does, that the work doesn’t end until the world has been perfected.”

The film critic and historian Michael Bronski sees not only elements of Jewish but also Christian theology. He says, “The groundhog is clearly the resurrected Christ, the ever hopeful renewal of life at springtime, at a time of pagan-Christian holidays...  And when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say that with great respect.” (“Groundhog Almighty,” by Alex Kuczynski, New York Times, Dec. 7, 2003)

* * *

If we could boil down all the world’s wisdom into one short sentence, it would be “this too shall pass.” The bitter cold winter weather will pass. We don’t know exactly when, but sooner or later, the temperatures will warm up, the sun will rise higher in the sky, and spring will come. 

Likewise the trials and tribulations of our own lives will pass by. Sometimes life is hard, hard as flint. Hard as ice. But it won’t stay that way. Change is inevitable. There will be times when life is soft and gentle again. Soft as a spring pond, and full of mysteries as beautiful as eggs in a nest, unhatched, and watched over by a ghost of holiness.

Hard and soft, cold and warm, both of these, over and over. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven… a time of love, a time of hate, a time of war, a time of peace.” The words from Ecclesiastes make the same point: “this too shall pass.”

But this is only half of the lesson of Pete Seeger’s story about the king and his wise men. Yes, change is inevitable. It is the single certainty of our lives: our seasons and our situations will change.

What is uncertain is how we will respond. Our lives are filled with an endlessly recurring variety of challenges and opportunities. Again and again, we are offered opportunities to choose hate or love. Again and again, we are challenged to choose between war and peace. Will we choose peace? Maybe. Will we choose love? Maybe. All the wisdom of the world can be boiled down to this single word: maybe.

This week, I have been reminded of the choices Pete Seeger made in his long life. He was a singer, who sang for the labor movements of the 1940s and 50s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. He marched along with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and helped make the song “We Shall Overcome” an anthem for civil rights. 

Pete Seeger was also a Unitarian Universalists. I heard him at the General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2005, when he was in his mid-eighties. Having sung all his life, his voice was beginning to fail him. But that didn’t matter, because as far as he was concerned performances were always above all about engaging his listeners, and getting everyone to sing together. And that’s just what he did with us, at Fort Worth. It was a powerful moment.

This week, at age 94, Pete Seeger passed away. But his songs, and his unwavering efforts to promote peace and justice, will continue to inspire us for years to come. 

* * *

We may not be magically stranded in a small snowy town on February 2nd, cursed and blessed to repeat the same day, again and again. But we do have many, many days in our lives. Thousands and thousands of days. Every day the sun rises, and we can either do just what we have always done, or we can try to do something different. We can acknowledge how we may have sometimes been self-centered or indifferent to others, and we can choose to be kind and caring instead. We can acknowledge how we sometimes wallow in our misery, and choose to take a different tack, and do what we know will make us truly happy

Every day, and every season of the year, we are offered opportunities to choose how we will live. Every day we can choose to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse. Every day we can take a step toward happiness.

May our every day be a small step toward happiness.

May our every day be a small step toward peace and love. 

May our every day take us one step closer to a better world.

Amen.